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ORCHESTRAL WORKFLOW SOLVED
Over the years there has been the age old problem of trying to get a full orchestra playing in a DAW using various workarounds - the great Carl Irwin has dedicated much time to making qsynth, qsampler, carla and fantasia achieve the full orchestra - even using inserts to keep everything in house. The ultimate issue was the 16 midi channel limit.
MUSESCORE 4 came along and we can now have a full orchestra with the very best sounds at our disposal - the only problem was we needed to input the notes in musescore as notation . . . which takes me a month of Sundays and wasn't practical.
This was due to the erroneous conclusion that musescore 4 cannot import midi files; naturally leading to playing the keyboard directly into musescore 4 with all the latency problems that entails.
The great news is that you don't 'import' midi files . . . you 'open' them from the file menu. I recorded a brass band piece in qtractor - exported it as a midi file - opened it in musescore 4 and it was all there. I just needed to reassign some instruments and put the dynamic markings on and was good to go . . . and of course, this totally solves our '16 midi channel limit' issue.
So, from now, my workflow is . . .
1. Record all orchestral tracks in qtractor without worrying about soundfonts - just label the tracks properly
2. Export as a midi file
3. Open (not import) midi file in musescore 4
4. Export as audio.
5. Import audio in the qtractor session and continue all other recordings as normal.
What a gorgeous time to be alive ;)
re. 16 midi channel limit
hi, thanks for sharing your (successful) workflow...
may you also briefly explain what is the "16 midi channel limit" issue you're mentioning? historically this is a MIDI (v1) limitation on a per device/port basis, also affecting sf2 instruments in general... you may work around in qtractor by adding more MIDI output buses and connecting them ports to additional sf2 instrument engine instances eg. qsynth; dunno out it works in musescore4...
cheers
Hi Rui, I don't know whether
Hi Rui, I don't know whether it was a bug or a poor set up on my part, but I was only able to run fluidsynth as a DSSI plugin with no problems. When I followed the various instructions of Carl Irwin, it never worked. From the Carla external to the 'inserts' workaround, I couldn't get the routing to work. This was due to my soundcard set up and I wasn't savvie enough to sort it.
This is why my new workflow solves all my problems. The great thing about qtractor is the ease with which one can edit both midi and sound . . . in other words . . . everything. Its so easy to just record and export to Musescore, let that handle the orchestra, then bring it back in to complete in qtractor.
I can't speak for Carl Irwin, but suspect he is over the moon about qtractor's ability to import midi faithfully after he enquired about it recently, because it frees him from using Ardour. I like everything simple - I'm 52 and don't have time for complex workflows. The ability to open midi files in musescore 4 enables me to do all my playing and recording in qtractor . . . . which I now massively prefer to the Cubase (s) I was using for 30 years.
I recently saw a complaint on one of these forums about the "poor state of Linux Audio". I disagree. I can do things now that I could never do in windows . . . . all made possible by people like yourself and others. I discovered this new workflow in the middle of the night - am happy beyond words.
Thanks Rui . . .
re. poor state of Linux Audio...
wink wink:)
yet again, thanks (a lot) for the commendation
double cheers:)
I can confirm that when I am
I can confirm that when I am dealing in channels exceeding 16 in Qtractor, I split them to multiple MIDI busses. I actually have made a habit of just separating orchestral sections by MIDI busses and this leaves me with a solid margin for each section to add to without accidentally crossing MIDI data points on the different channels.
As for Qtractor v. Ardour. Ardour 7 has caught up nicely and I have been using Ardour via the UbuntuStudio Backport repos for most work lately (I have not paid for Ardour). But I absolutely keep an up to date install of Qtractor (which definitely updates more frequently) on my system. I also use LMMS. They each have their advantages in particular situations.
Like you, I have been using audio export from Musescore 4 for my orchestral tracks since it came out last December. I just see no reason to use anything else to render general orchestral instruments right now. So even with my Ardour use... it's for audio and film score sync (tempo and meter mapping). I'm writing almost exclusively from notation at the moment.
-Carl
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